How Cartels Are Connected to Your Dinner Plate!

[00:00:00] Speaker A: What do drug cartels, a flesh eating parasite, and cheap feedlot beef have in common? More than you'd think. And it's time we talk about it. [00:00:10] Speaker B: Welcome to the Duster Mud Podcast. I'm Shelley and I'm rich. After 25 years of rich being in the Air Force and flying airplanes, we started a farm, a regenerative farm. Part of that farm is beef cattle. So this story has a very particular, close to home interest for us. Yeah. So there I was the other day. I got a text message from a dear friend who texts us often. Interesting things that she sees in agriculture. Though she's not in agriculture, she's still in the Department of Defense, her and her husband. But if she sees something that pertains to food freedom or farming, she'll shoot it our way. Have you seen this? And this particular thing was like. I was like, no, no, I haven't. I don't even know what that is. [00:01:03] Speaker A: Well, it's a screw worm, obviously. [00:01:06] Speaker B: A screw worm. I've never heard of a screw. Heard of a few things like soldier fly larvae. Yeah, but not screw worm. I had never heard of this. So I have to read the article. And what was? Educate ourselves. Right, so let's go. You've been studying. [00:01:24] Speaker A: Yeah, I have. And from that article, then it led me to an article this morning that had even more data. I'll leave a link to that article. And this is tying together the drug cartels and cheap feedlot beef and this screwworm infestation and how they all play together. So that's what we're going to talk about today is how all of that plays together. I think that it's important for us to first start with what is this screw worm? [00:01:55] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, it is something that the United States actually had to deal with before. A screw worm is the larva. [00:02:05] Speaker A: Yes. [00:02:06] Speaker B: Of a fly. [00:02:06] Speaker A: Yeah, Right. [00:02:08] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a. It's a fancy maggot. Very deadly. [00:02:14] Speaker A: Honestly, it's fancy. [00:02:15] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:02:17] Speaker A: I'll put the name of the fly right there because I can't say it. [00:02:20] Speaker B: Yeah, it's one of those Latin words that they made us learn in biology. [00:02:22] Speaker A: Yeah, whatever. [00:02:23] Speaker B: Okay, go ahead. [00:02:24] Speaker A: And it lays its eggs in open wounds. So any open wound. On cattle. But it doesn't have to be cattle. And we'll get to that a little later. It can lay larvae in the wound, and that larvae then starts to develop and literally eats the animal. And it's not just a little bit like a screwworm infestation. The. The. The cow will be dead. In 7 to 14 days. [00:02:56] Speaker B: A cow that's a large animal. [00:02:59] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:02:59] Speaker B: So an infestation literally can take down a thousand pound animal in under two weeks. [00:03:06] Speaker A: That's right. [00:03:07] Speaker B: That is crazy and scary all at the same time. [00:03:10] Speaker A: Yeah. Humans are not immune, by the way. [00:03:14] Speaker B: Oh, okay. [00:03:17] Speaker A: Yeah. The issue with cattle and, and livestock in general is you might not be a farmer that animals every day. [00:03:25] Speaker B: Right. [00:03:25] Speaker A: And even if you are with them, you might not be looking for a screw worm infestation. [00:03:30] Speaker B: Right. We are with ours a lot. We are so small and our herd is small enough with only 30 something of them that we can go and see and stand around them. But the guys out west who are farming thousands of thousands of acres of cows. Yeah. They don't look at their cows every day. [00:03:45] Speaker A: Yeah. And out west even, I mean, like this is a big deal, say Texas, right on the border from where this is coming from, with huge ranches, thousands of acres, thousands of cattle. In the 1950s is when this was really an issue last. And it cost over $200 million to deal with this screw worm issue. And in Today's dollars, that's 1.8 billion. So if that, if the same thing happens again, that's the kind of expense we're looking at. If everything were the same, it would be 1.8 billion, almost $2 billion. [00:04:25] Speaker B: It's crippling. That's crippling for an industry that often struggles. Yeah, already. But in the 1950s, they were able to, over the course of several years, eradicate that fly and keep it at bay through sterilization insect technique. They sterilized, they, they grew. Sterilized males. [00:04:48] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:04:49] Speaker B: Because of the way they procreate. They sterilized males, they introduced them, drop them into the population, and then they could not procreate anymore. [00:04:59] Speaker A: That's right. A couple of scientists found that the male of this fly procreates with everybody and the female only procreates with one male. So they were by doing, by introducing these sterile males. It had an exponential effect because one sterile male could procreate amongst a bunch of females. And when it did, that female didn't reproduce with any other males. So that's how they were able to do this and they started introducing it. So like when they would find an infestation, they would treat the infestation and then they would introduce these sterile males to the population there around the infestation. And it wasn't fast. You know, it wasn't just like spray it and kill it, but like it, the, the, it was effective and they Were able to move it south and set up almost like a screw worm barrier at, in Panama, which is narrow. [00:06:02] Speaker B: Which is so narrow that's a, got. [00:06:03] Speaker A: It all the way down to narrow. And they have kept it at bay south of Panama. [00:06:10] Speaker B: So by the early 2000s, eradication had extended down there. Right, okay. But it's coming north. [00:06:23] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:06:24] Speaker B: And the, this story is just crazy. So it's, it's coming north. [00:06:31] Speaker A: Yeah. And obviously you would say, well why, if we eradicated it, why is it coming back? [00:06:37] Speaker B: Something has changed. So if we, if we know that it's down there, we, and we're keeping tabs on everything. But something has changed. What was it? Narco ranching happening above or near the area and them raising cattle for various reasons. For the cartel. [00:07:05] Speaker A: Yeah, the cartels themselves are raising the cattle. So they are often it is a way, like there's lots of reasons why they do it. One of them is it's a way to take dirty money and make it clean. Right. They're able to launder it. They can buy ranches. They can oftentimes steal or acquire very cheap cattle. And then they're able to turn that and make profits on the money. So they're able to turn that dirty money into a cleaner money. But they, they don't always do things above board. Right. Like. I know, right. It's really surprising that the drug cartels are, are doing these things that are bad. [00:07:50] Speaker B: The article specifically mentioned Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua as hotbeds for this particular activity. [00:07:59] Speaker A: Narco ranching. Narco cattle. So they're, they're using these, the cattle trailers. One of the things that they do is they use the, the semi trucks loaded down with cattles to haul drugs. Because it like who wants to climb through a semi truck full of cattle to look for drugs? They, they just don't. They look for drugs in passenger vehicles and empty trucks, not livestock trailers. They don't look for them in livestock trailers. [00:08:27] Speaker B: It's dangerous. [00:08:28] Speaker A: B really dirty. [00:08:30] Speaker B: That's dirty. Yeah, yeah. [00:08:40] Speaker A: So they're using the trailers. [00:08:42] Speaker B: Great cover up. [00:08:42] Speaker A: To transport the drugs. They're using cattle. They're moving cattle illegally and just introducing them into ranches in Mexico. So you know, a less than scrupulous Mexican rancher can grab narco trafficked cattle and add them to their herd and their herd grows. And then they're also being able to get these cattle across the border even and introduce them into the US feedlots. So that's where this whole thing is tying together is these cattle that are making their way from South America. [00:09:21] Speaker B: So you have unchecked cattle coming in and being mixed with legitimate checked cattle. And once that's mixed, you don't have any idea the health of those animals or what they're bringing in. And now we have. [00:09:35] Speaker A: Yeah, they're often bypassing the inspections. That's right. [00:09:38] Speaker B: And now you've got a potential infestation problem of something that you had once eradicated. [00:09:46] Speaker A: The screw worm's been eradicated through a project of the government. Now we don't have that to worry about anymore. But that was a significant problem back then. Yeah, the, you know, they're. They're not monitored, they're not inspected, they're not treated for diseases or screw worm infestations. This. The screw worm, you know, like, it is able to just basically flourish in these conditions. [00:10:14] Speaker B: Okay. [00:10:17] Speaker A: So that's how. That's how we're. One reason why it's making its way back. [00:10:23] Speaker B: It. [00:10:23] Speaker A: One reason why it has made its way past the Panama sort of barrier that we had set up. [00:10:30] Speaker B: So I guess at some inspection stations or points. In 2023, Panama screwworm detections exploded from 25 a year to 6,500 cases, and they were detected in Costa Rica, Nicaragua. [00:10:48] Speaker A: And Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, and Mexico. [00:10:56] Speaker B: That's a. That's a. That's a significant increase. And that was in 2023. Now we're in 2025. [00:11:01] Speaker A: Right. [00:11:01] Speaker B: And it has gotten serious enough that we got to put a stop to something. [00:11:08] Speaker A: Right. And in November, we did put a stop to cattle imports from Mexico. [00:11:14] Speaker B: Okay. [00:11:14] Speaker A: In November of 2024, the. The imports were stopped and then lifted that ban in February of 2025, and then just recently reinstated the ban in May 9th. Well, it may have. May have. [00:11:35] Speaker B: A couple days ago. [00:11:36] Speaker A: Just a couple days ago, they reinstated the ban, to which the. The president of Mexico, you know, is all up in arms about how this ban is hurting the Mexican economy. And it's, you know, it's bad for Mexico, and I don't know, for me, it is the. Look, I can't argue that it is not bad for Mexico. It probably is bad for Mexico to have the bans on these imports. But at some point, the United States has to take responsibility for the United States herd, our national herd, and not. [00:12:12] Speaker B: Just our cattle herd, which is our primary, our food. It also, you mentioned it earlier, it affects other things like wild deer, wild boar, stray dogs, and if allowed to just run wild, it can affect down to the. Down to humans. [00:12:34] Speaker A: Right. [00:12:36] Speaker B: So you're talking about your deer herd, which is Very important. And wildlife in general. [00:12:46] Speaker A: Yeah. So it actually is a real problem. And I think that the United States is acting wisely to do something. Right. Like we have to do something. We can't just say, oh, well, you know, we don't want to hurt the economy of Mexico, so we'll just keep importing. Even though there's an issue with this. [00:13:06] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's really, really affecting the Texas, Arizona border state. [00:13:12] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:13:12] Speaker B: Feed lots. Because that's when, when these cattle come over, to my understanding, when these cattle come over the border from Mexico into the United States, it would be those border state feedlots that they would be entering to feed them out and get them into the American food food system. [00:13:34] Speaker A: That's right. [00:13:35] Speaker B: And we talk often about the price of meat and this feedlot meat or CAFO meat being where we get our less expensive meat or our cheap beef from. [00:13:51] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So imports. We import about 2 million beef cattle a year that go directly into feedlots. 1.25 million of those come from Mexico and they go into those feedlots like you mentioned on the southern states. So it, that ends up being somewhere between about 3 and a half and 5% of our total amount of cattle that come through the feedlots. But still a 5% hit makes a significant difference and it can impact things like the price of beef. [00:14:34] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. [00:14:36] Speaker A: And that's just if you cut off the imports. Right. Like in my opinion, a worse problem is you don't cut off the imports and then you have a screw worm infestation. [00:14:47] Speaker B: Right. Because you have 1.25 million cattle coming over that a percentage of them are not legitimately raised cattle. They're illegally raised. And we don't know what, what their status is. [00:15:06] Speaker A: And we don't know how many. Like, you don't know how many of these narco cattle there are. Right, Right. I mean, like, it's below board. Like there's nobody tracking it. There's. There's no electronic identification that drug traffickers are using. You know, like, it's not, it's not like anybody. And they're not reporting, you know, like. [00:15:28] Speaker B: You know, and this would be, I could see where it would be for the United States. Like, wow, we need to, we need to, to get a handle on this or. But we choose not to because maybe we're a small island nation and we can't grow enough beef or we can't grow enough of our own meat to supplement this particular situation. But that is ludicrous. We are sitting on thousands and thousands of acres. We have a land rich nation and we got a lot of cowboys and ranchers too out there. We can grow our own beef. We don't have to do this, but we, we can't. [00:16:13] Speaker A: We do this. This is the, the choice for cheap beef. The general populace wants cheap food. And the, the feedlot, that, that constant churn, I mean just, I don't know, I think of the lemmings falling off of like the, the constant cattle falling into the feedlots that churn is to feed the insatiable like drive for cheap food. Right. And, and like doing things in a regenerative manner. Doing things like we do takes a whole lot of land, like way more land than what lots use. Even if you consider the land that it takes to grow the feed that goes into the feedlots, it still takes more land if you're just putting cows on grass. [00:17:06] Speaker B: Okay. [00:17:06] Speaker A: Like, so it is, it is a more expensive way of producing food. And this, this just. I don't know, I really don't even know what it is. Desire to feed the world, maybe, maybe the cheese way back comes out of that. Like, I don't know. But there's this, there's just this thing that food has to be cheap. And as long as that is the thing, then there you're going to continue to deal with issues that arise from pouring millions of cattle into these feedlot operations. [00:17:40] Speaker B: Outsourcing your production and your biosecurity at the same time. [00:17:46] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Basically. [00:17:48] Speaker B: Well, it's, it's even hit Tyson. This whole thing has hit Tyson Foods. And most of us think of Tyson as being chicken. But Tyson is one of the largest beef processor producer people companies in this country. [00:18:04] Speaker A: Yeah. Tyson just reported a $258 million loss for the second quarter of 2025. And partly attributed to cattle shortages and the high beef prices. We've been talking about this for a while. Beef prices going up, up, up and at every level. At every level. And eventually we're going to see this hit the grocery stores like more so even than what it is. So right now you've got one of the largest beef producers just saying we reported a loss. [00:18:41] Speaker B: Yeah, that's not a good, that's not a good signal. [00:18:45] Speaker A: No, because they can't continue to report a loss. Right. Like, right. By law they have to take care of their investors. So at some point that, that is going to hit the grocery store shelves. [00:18:59] Speaker B: Well, it's another example of the US food being artificially cheap at the expense of transparent transparency, quality, safety. That Tyson Wants to be able to serve cheap beef and now they've, they've got problems on their hands, you know. [00:19:22] Speaker A: Yeah. So if your food supply is reliant on the narcotics trade, y' all, it might be time to rethink your food supply. [00:19:34] Speaker B: Eating cheap food on the backs of, on the back of cocaine sales. [00:19:43] Speaker A: Yes. [00:19:44] Speaker B: That's just the truth. [00:19:46] Speaker A: Right. [00:19:47] Speaker B: So every time I go to the grocery store and buy a pack of just standard beef right off of the shelf, I'm potentially supporting the Mexican drug cartel. [00:20:03] Speaker A: Not just Mexico, but yeah, okay, sure. [00:20:06] Speaker B: The, the narcotics cartels of the world. [00:20:10] Speaker A: Yeah, sure. That's. [00:20:14] Speaker B: Alarming. [00:20:15] Speaker A: Yeah, I, I think that it is fair for us to take a stand for the nation to say no, for us to say we're not doing this, we're going to, we're going to say no. There's, there's going to have to be. You mentioned biosecurity. There's probably going to have to be some funding thrown out. [00:20:38] Speaker B: Government, well, you know, regulation. [00:20:44] Speaker A: So we talk a whole lot about get out of my business and leave me alone kind of mentality as far as the government is concerned. But the, you know, in my opinion, one of the core reasons to have a national government is for national defense. And in my opinion, this is absolutely a, a defense issue. It is the defense of our nation's herd. It is in defense of our nation's economy and in defense of our, our populace's health, really. [00:21:25] Speaker B: Our food supply. [00:21:26] Speaker A: Population. It's in defense of our food supply, like, so I think in this case it is absolutely fair and right for the government to step in and protect our nation. [00:21:41] Speaker B: I agree. [00:21:44] Speaker A: That easy. [00:21:46] Speaker B: Crazy. Yes, I do. Okay, so we're not obligated in your opinion, to just accept whatever's coming across the border as well, you know, we gotta do business. And this is just what we're gonna have to deal with when it gets here on our shores. [00:22:05] Speaker A: No, and things like there have been a lot of cuts to programs in the past, you know, 100 something days, a whole lot of cuts to programs the USDA has taken. Like there have been 16,000 people that took an early retirement. They're wanting a 30,000 person reduction in the staff of the USDA. And I understand, I've been in bloated government bureaucracies. Like, I get it. I'm not saying that. [00:22:34] Speaker B: Right. [00:22:35] Speaker A: But there are some programs that might need a second look. And the administration has talked about if we cut too far or if we do something that, you know, needs to be undone, we will this is one. If it has been cut, I don't know. But I have suspicions. If it has been cut, it. This needs to be reinstated. Yeah, and I can see why, especially to a technocrat. The. I'm sorry. We're spending how much on sterile flies? [00:23:11] Speaker B: Yeah, right. [00:23:12] Speaker A: And this would be an easy one to be like, yeah, no, we're not doing that well. But this might be a case for the defense of our nation where we do need to spend the money more. [00:23:25] Speaker B: USDA personnel at the cattle agriculture crossings coming across the. Coming across the border into these feedlots to. Maybe we should plus up that. [00:23:40] Speaker A: Well, that might not be a place to cut. Right. Like of the 30,000, maybe don't cut employees you're getting rid of. [00:23:45] Speaker B: Sure, maybe. Or maybe we move some forces down there. If we're. It's kind of like war on a fly. Let's move some forces down there to the border so that we can combat the fly larvae problem in the cattle and do some more testing or something. And no, like I hate that I'm even saying this. [00:24:03] Speaker A: Oh, I know. Well, and when. [00:24:05] Speaker B: But that's reality. [00:24:06] Speaker A: The program as it worked in the 50s, it wasn't like this big. Huge government regulations and now you have to have EID tags and you like. It wasn't that. It was. We're going to work with farmers. If you have an infestation, let us know about it. We'll help you treat your cattle and then we will supply these sterile flies and then the infestation will go away. So it was a partnership between the farmers and ranchers and the government. [00:24:33] Speaker B: And it doesn't have to be a nuclear bomb. Well, no, I'm saying that because we've been dealing with so many things with, with the bird flu and chickens. And if you have an infestation, they're going to come in and they're going to just wipe them all out. That's the only way they know how to do stuff is nuclear bomb them. [00:24:49] Speaker A: Well, that. That's changing. Right. This administration is treating the birds a little bit differently. [00:24:54] Speaker B: What I'm saying is coming when? Anytime. We're talking in the past little bit about the USDA and their involvement. You know, it's not some kind of. Maybe it's reached a kinder, gentler approach to dealing with a pesky problem. And if we could do that, the cattlemen and the ranchers would then trust that they would come in and help me because this is our nation's food. Yeah, help me. Let's get this thing taken Care of, not. Oh, sorry, you have to eradicate this via, you know, putting all your cows down something ridiculous. [00:25:25] Speaker A: Well, you know, you can't have cows on your land again for X number of years. [00:25:29] Speaker B: Something absolutely absurd. Right, so, so, but which you're right. [00:25:33] Speaker A: That is the way they were treating the birds. [00:25:34] Speaker B: Right, but so you could see there, there would be a little bit of skepticism on the part of the farmer rancher saying, hey, wait a minute, you know, just being the naysayer of the USDA coming in saying, oh, you've got a fly infestation problem. What are we going to do about that? I'm here, I'm here, I'm the government and I'm here to help. Right. But if we could, if we could trust the process and go back to what they did in the 1950s and their attitude towards making sure the beef industry remained, which it's under such attack from outside sources. If we can make sure that the beef industry remains intact and have the USDA protect the beef industry, that would be great. [00:26:20] Speaker A: Yeah. For my part, the last thing we need is another thing. Reducing our nation's beef herd. [00:26:30] Speaker B: I agree. [00:26:30] Speaker A: Right. Like we've talked about that a few times already. How the herd is as small as it's been since the 50s. [00:26:37] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:26:38] Speaker A: Right. So it's very small and not getting bigger. Cattlemen are continuing to sell their replacement heifers because the price is high. They're not holding heifers in order to rebuild herds. Farmers and ranchers are getting older. Now's a perfect time for them to exit. I mean, like, yeah, there are a lot of things and the last thing we need is now. Oh, and by the way, here's a screw worm infestation because of drug trafficking. Wow. So I, I think it, it really is a significant issue. I think that the ties to the drug cartels make it worse. And I, I think it, look, I don't know, import some import, export, like whatever. I, I'm, I'm not a macro economist. Like, okay, whatever. But I think the, our nation's continual push for cheap, cheap, cheap food is. [00:27:52] Speaker B: Has gotten us to this point is. [00:27:53] Speaker A: At the foundation of a lot of these problems. And I think it's at the foundation of this one also. I think a, if you care, a push toward. Find local food. [00:28:07] Speaker B: Yeah, if, yeah, absolutely. [00:28:09] Speaker A: Know where it comes from, know where it's been. Like the food we sell in our meat store air to ground meats. Like when we sell hamburger that came from one cow, oftentimes it has a name. You Know. [00:28:28] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, like, right. [00:28:30] Speaker A: It's not, this is, you know, it's not coming from a processing plant that's processing 5, 6, 10,000 animals a day. And all of the hamburger gets thrown into a vat. [00:28:42] Speaker B: Yeah. No, it's not. [00:28:43] Speaker A: Or all of the scraps get thrown into a vat and turned into hamburger along with cardboard containers full of scraps coming from Brazil and Argentina. And it all get, you know, like that's. Yeah, that is a drive for cheap meat. You know, the. Maybe a little bit more money spent on knowing where your food comes from and trusting the quality of the food. And even if, even if you don't like it, like if you buy our beef and don't like it, go find another farmer. Oh yeah, and maybe you like their beef, right? Like we do grass only. Our cows only eat grass. And some people do not like that. I understand that. Please don't buy our beef. [00:29:37] Speaker B: Right. For sure. [00:29:39] Speaker A: Go find somebody that's gonna grain finish. [00:29:41] Speaker B: Right on their farm for you. [00:29:42] Speaker A: Grain finishes on their farm. [00:29:44] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:29:45] Speaker A: And like, that's awesome. Like, not everybody likes grass fed beef. I do, but not everyone does. And that doesn't mean, oh well, I guess I gotta go to Walmart then. No, you know, no, it means go find a farmer that grain finishes. There's probably more of them than those that grass finish. Right. So like it. Just because you can't find the first farm you go to may not be exactly what you're wanting. That doesn't mean give up that. Go, go to a different farm, find a different farmer. We ship. [00:30:16] Speaker B: We do. Yes, I will ship it straight to you. [00:30:19] Speaker A: We'll ship you meat. If you can't find a farmer that works for you or with you, not. [00:30:23] Speaker B: Only do we, but a lot of people, a lot of people in this space too, that they will ship it straight to you. There are a lot of ways to get frozen product across the, across the, I don't know, shipping lines, I guess. You know for sure. Another thing to do is stay informed. Stay informed about your food supply. Know what's going on. Our food supply is our lifeline. Genuinely stop. [00:30:52] Speaker A: Pause for just a moment and think about it. [00:30:55] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:30:56] Speaker A: Think back to 2020, when the supply chain started shutting down, the trucks stopped running and the grocery stores stopped getting restocked. Now. [00:31:08] Speaker B: Just, just keep your finger on the pulse of what's happening with it, with the food industry across the board. And that gives, the more we're informed, the better decisions that we can make. And the better decisions we can make, the better prepared. We are to make sure the food stays on our table. [00:31:26] Speaker A: Y Where's your food come from? [00:31:27] Speaker B: Yeah, where does it come from? [00:31:29] Speaker A: It's a good thing to know. [00:31:30] Speaker B: I think this was a fun conversation. Yeah. Hey, genuinely, at air to ground meats.com we do ship meat if you're interested in farm raised, family owned, veteran owned, clean as we can possibly make it. GMO free grass, finished. Go check out air ground meats.com we will ship straight to you. The best thing that we can possibly grow. [00:31:59] Speaker A: Yep. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thanks for hanging out with us again, y' all. And until next time, bye, y' all. Bye.